In 2015, the European Commission Initiative on Breast Cancer (ECIBC) started the development of the European guidelines for breast cancer screening and diagnosis (henceforth the European Breast Guidelines) under the auspices of the Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE) and the technical and scientific coordination of the Directorate-General Joint Research Centre (JRC). To support the JRC in this task, a Guidelines Development Group (GDG), consisting of independent experts and individuals, was established.
The European Breast Guidelines’ scope (The Scope) represented the first output of the development process of the European Breast Guidelines. Via a public call for feedback, stakeholders and individual citizens were invited to provide their feedback on The Scope.
The call for feedback was open from 18 December 2015 to 17 January 2016 and an online questionnaire was made available on the ECIBC web hub via the EU Survey platform. The JRC received a total of 82 valid responses, from 40 individuals from 18 different countries and from 42 organisations from 20 different countries.
During a meeting held in Varese (Italy) in March 2016, the GDG discussed the new version of The Scope which was prepared taking into account the results of the call for feedback. The Scope was finalised and approved by the GDG after some minor editing on 6 September 2016 and was later made publicly available together with this report.